Today was the start of the mid year examinations. This is from Wednesday to Friday. I however only have exams today, which are Geography and Physics, so I have the other two days off meaning a four day weekend for me.

The Geography exam was pretty straight forward. There were two parts to it, general skills and natural processes. I think I was pretty sorted with them. Although in saying that, I did have difficulty trying to work out the map resource due to it being black and white and not very detailed. Also in the knowledge exam, two of the questions seemed to ask the exact same thing, except they wanted them answered in different ways (one written and one drawn.) I was going to write and draw about the same thing but I wasn’t sure if that is acceptable so I attempted to discuss something else, which probably ended up to be a bad idea.

The Physics exam was quite difficult. It was a practical where we had to write a comprehensive method of a pre-determined experiment. That was pretty simple, but then carrying out the experiment was a challenge. We had to make a pendulum that swings on a diagonal. Its too hard for me to explain what I mean but it was very hard to set up, and even harder to run. The data was average due because of the experiment. Doing the math on the raw results was simple but then when it came to discussing the experiment, I was blank.

Staying at school until 4:30pm is really strange, mainly because it is so deserted, as well as being dark (well in winter.) I’m pretty happy that both of my exams were on the same day to allow me to have an extra long 4 day weekend. Now it is time to relax after all that hard studying, or lack there of.

Despite yesterdays awful weather, both of the year 13 Geography classes went on a fieldtrip down to the beach. The purpose of this trip was to see human interference on coastal processes. This is important because the information we will collect and the things we will see will help us with an internal assessment later on in the term.

So anyway, when I woke up that morning, I could hear the rain hitting the roof of the house. I was a little disappointed because I had hoped for better weather because I would rather stay warm and dry than cold and wet. I was sure they wouldn’t cancel the trip so I went up school prepared, with pens, paper, lunch and a camera. As I got to school, the rain had settled, although it looked like it could start again at anytime. Regardless, down at the beach was going to be wet and icky.

Everyone got on the bus, and we were off on the trip. Our first stop was down to the Dunedin City Council where we would meet with a lady that will talk about Coastal Dunedin. Oddly, she was Australian and had only been here doing the job for 5 weeks, although she did seem to have a fair bit of knowledge. She talked and there was a slideshow on the projector, but I couldn’t see that. I did have a look and touch of some plants that are down there.

After that, we started heading down to the beach area. But before we went there, we stopped outside McDonalds for people to get (and eat) lunch. It was only quarter to 11 so it was a very early lunch. Me and my mates decided to walk down the road a little bit and get Burger King instead. I got a BK Chicken Value Meal. It was really good, much much better than anything McDonalds could offer.

Then it was time to go down to the beach. We went down the St Clair beach and walked along it. We looked at the water and what the beach looked like. Everyone took heaps of pictures so we could look at them and refer to them later on. During this walk, the weather was starting to get worse. It didn’t pour down, but it was starting to drizzle. We then got back into the bus and drove further along the beach. At this point, it was raining. The teacher decided that we would stay in the bus and not go outside and do what was originally planned.

Driving around for 2 hours was interesting but started to get boring. Then we got back to school and I went home. I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that the weather was bad, but at least we didn’t have to go out in the rain and get cold and wet. If it wasn’t raining, we would have been collecting data of the beach such as measurements, calculations, sketches and pictures of the beach, so I suppose we got of that work. The trip wasn’t that bad because it meant a day of school. I can’t wait for the next Geography fieldtrip later on in the year, we’re going to Queenstown!

Geography Beach Fieldtrip Photographs are at http://flickr.com/photos/yum9me/sets/72157605209611191/

As mentioned in my previous post, I spend Monday and Tuesday away at a school retreat. In the morning, I went to school with my gear, which consisted of clothes, a pillow and a sleeping bag. From there, we went on the bus to a place not that far out of Dunedin. It was basically in the middle of a rural area so there were no shops or places to run away to. When we got there, I got my gear and went to my cabin. I shared this with 5 other guys, all but one of them were okay.

The whole time we were there, we did some games, discussions and some own time for personal thought. The group discussions were pretty interesting and mainly consisted of subjects about ourselves and our family. There were also some group activities such and the usual confidence course and getting over the giant wall etcetera.

During the night, we had dinner, which I do have to say was really horrible! They got fish and chips. The fish wasn’t that good and the batter on it was horrible. The chips were alright but I have had a lot better. Its not really the schools fault that is was bad, for they didn’t cook it. After that, we went and did our own thing, which was socialising for most people. The a bit later in the night, there was a mass. Yeah, its a Catholic School retreat so it was expected we would have something like this, but this was really the only religious stuff that happened, which I’m thankful for.

The next morning, we got packed and did a few more things. One of the things that we did was get back into our groups and individually say nice things about each member of our group. It was a really nice discussion and hearing what others thing about each other and what others thought about myself. We then wrote personal notes to each of our group members. This is probably the most interesting part of the retreat. Then it was time to go back to school.

We ended up getting back at 3:15pm. I had to catch the public bus to my house with a bag of clothes/pillow and a sleeping bag. This is rather awkward and I was tired from the lack of sleep that night which made carrying the items down the hill a challenge. When I got home, I realised I didn’t have my keys, they were inside the house. I also remembered that my sister wasn’t going to be home till late so she won’t be able to let me in. The only other person that could let me in was my neighbour, but she wasn’t home when I walked past. I went for a walk around the block and by the time I got back, she was home and she let me in.

The retreat was a great experience and I am happy I went. It didn’t bother me one bit that I didn’t have any computer or internet, or any communication to the outside (internet) world. The only problem with leaving the internet for more than 40 hours is the email banked up, the 20 or so pages of tweets on twitter, the dozen pages of articles on Digg and the thousand or so articles in my RSS reader. Lucky I was away during a quiet period or else I would have a whole lot more to catch up on. I AM BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER!!!

Tomorrow I will be leaving for an overnight school trip. We are going somewhere not too far away and will be doing something that I do not know. So as of around 11pm tonight, that will be the last time I use my computer until I get back on the Tuesday afternoon.

Now that’s around 40 hours with no computer, no cellphone or iPod or anything of the sort. I am not going to have any technology for a long time. I can’t remember the last time I have been away from my computer for that long, but its probably been years. The longest I am usually away from the internet world is about 10 hours which isn’t that long but I am going to be away from it all for 40 hours and in 10 hours the internet moves pretty fast so I’m going to have a lot to catch up on being away from it for 4 times that.

Being away from the internet for so long is going to make it hard to come back with a huge pile of articles in my RSS reader, stories on Digg, Tweets to read, and other things to catch up on. This opportunity my help me by evaluating my internet usage and possibly help me make some cuts on unnecessary parts so I have more time to do other stuff and be more productive. As well as helping me through the experience of going away, it may also help me in my current life, online and offline. Maybe 40 hours away from it all will do me some good after all.

On Tuesday, it was tertiary open day in Dunedin. This was an opportunity for year 13 students to go onto campus and find out information on courses and such that the Otago University and Otago Polytechnic has to offer. This was compulsory for the year 13’s at my school to go to and the roll was taken to make sure we at least showed up (although that didn’t stop everyone from wagging it *cough* GTA IV *cough*.)

I turned up there and had a fair idea at the presentations I was going to see and the pamphlets I was going to take. I also went to a couple that I wasn’t going to but ended up going to because they were kinda relevant and a mate was going anyway and I needed something to do to pass the time. I went to the General Science presentation which covers the different courses for a Science degree. After that I went to the Applied Science presentation which has Software Engineering, although they didn’t say much about it. Then later on, I went to a Information Science presentation which talked a lot about IT. It was the most interesting presentation up to this point because the others were boring.

At the end of the presentation, I had 5 minutes to get over to the Polytechnic buildings to see a presentation for Information Technology. On my way there, I didn’t make a turn when I should have and I got completely lost. I had had to find my way back to on the right path. When I did finally figure out where the hell I was, I managed to find my way to the building. I was already 5 minutes late and I had difficulty finding the room in the reasonably large building. When I got to the room, there was a notice on the door saying there was a change. Different building, different room. After making my way to the correct room, I was 10 minutes late and I had missed quite a bit of the presentation. I was a little annoyed.

Anyway, after that fiasco, I made my way back to the University area and went to the Computer Science building for my last presentation before I go home. If you hadn’t guessed, the presentation was on Computer Science. It wasn’t that bad of a presentation. After seeing all of the presentations, I am still not 100% sure what I want to do next year but I am swaying towards doing Computer Science at Otago University. Now I just need to get that one pesky English credit and I should be well on my way of getting there.

From now, I will have no more school for 2 weeks. This has been a long term consisting of 11 weeks, although there was Easter break in the middle somewhere so it was probably more like 10 and a half weeks. Still, the term has been pretty long and has been pretty busy, as you would know if you have read the post from last week.

As far as schools concerned, we haven’t done that much at all this term. Have had 2 assessments in Statistics, which I managed to get an Excellence in, and the other one hasn’t been marked, 1 assessment in Geography, which hasn’t been marked either, 2 assessments in ICT, one passed, other not marked (but will be a pass),  1 assessment in Electronics which I passed and 1 in Physics which hasn’t been marked, but I know I haven’t passed it, yet.

Last day pretty much was mucking around. In ICT, I had finished the test in 2 and a half of the 4 periods given, so I ended up browsing the Internet and playing Minesweeper. In Electronics, I helped a friend try and troubleshoot a computer but it was well and truly fucked, then I started installing Windows XP on another machine and later on helped, which turned out to be actually doing it, installing RAM into another machine. Then last period of the day was the Physics test which was hard. Got to leave early which was a upside, I guess.

I don’t have anything planned for the holidays but it will more than likely consist of my being on the computer and internet doing basically nothing. Two weeks after doing that, school will start again. Not really looking forward to that but it will be nice to get test results back. Hopefully I can think of things to blog about during my holidays to make up for the lack of posts during the school time. HOLIDAYS ARE GO!!!

As you may not have noticed, my blog was updated to Wordpress 2.5 last week, thanks to Peppery. The only noticeable change is in the admin panel where is has been redone to be easier to use and look much nicer. It is taking a little bit of getting use to but after a while, I’m sure I will remember where they have moved things. For a new Wordpress user, the admin panel will definitely be easier to use but for an old user like me, I’m going to have to get fully use to it.

You may have noticed the lack of update in the past week or so. The reason for my absence in blogging is because I have been overloaded with assessments that were due. I had 5 different bits of schoolwork to do. One was a report for geography on the processes of building the new Carisbrook Stadium in Dunedin, which was really hard to do. I’d be lucky to pass because I had no bloody idea what I was rambling about. I also had a Statistics project to complete which was straightforward, just took a little bit of thinking and time to complete and write up. There was also some small bits of homework such as 2 pages of physics questions, some Computing tasks and also an electronics research project on transducers to be completed.

I have finished doing all assignments and hopefully my plate stays relitively clean for a while, especially during the holidays, so I can do what I normally do and not be tied down with homework and assignments to get done. Hopefully there is no homework for me to do over the holidays so I can have a relaxing break without having to even think about school or school work. I guess we will just have to wait and see.